Tech News Weekly: Issue 37
Important Windows security updates, Reddit going dark, setting up a proper backup solution on Windows
News
Operating Systems
Microsoft has released security updates for all supported versions of Windows yesterday. One of the patches needs to be enabled before it is active. It is KB5028407, which you find information about on this support page.
It describes a kernel vulnerability that can lead to information disclosure. It is not clear why Microsoft is not enabling the patch by default, as the company does not reveal its reason.
The support page linked above lists the changes that need to be made to the Windows Registry to protect devices against attacks that target the issue. All Windows 10 and 11 versions are affected, as well as Windows Server 2022 and some older versions of Windows.
Mobile
Reddit is testing a change on mobile that removes the ability to sign-in to the site for some mobile users who use a browser to access the site. The idea behind this is to get these users to use the official Reddit app, which gives the company more control. Affected users may delete cookies and retry the connection to deal with this for now.
Browser
Vivaldi 6.1 introduced support for running Bing Chat directly in the browser. Microsoft is testing access for some other browsers currently, but there is no guarantee at this point.
Google announced a number of new features for Chrome’s password manager, including a new dedicated page in Chrome, support for biometric authentication and password notes.
Google did release a security update for desktop Chrome that is patching five security issues, including one rated critical.
Mozilla released Firefox 114.0.1 to fix a startup crash in the browser that affected some users.
Microsoft Edge’s new image enhancing feature, which uses AI to improve the quality of images, is sending URLS of images to Microsoft. The feature may be turned on by default in some Edge installations and users who value their privacy should disable it:
Load edge://settings/privacy in the browser's address bar.
Scroll down to the Services section, which is near the bottom of the page.
Toggle "Enhance images in Microsoft Edge" to off.
Privacy and Security
Google Workspaces users may now switch to protecting their accounts with passkeys, an upcoming security standard for authentication that works without the use of passwords.
Amazon is considering adding ads to Prime Video, either as a new ad-supported plan, that is supposedly cheaper then, or by introducing an ad-free plan that costs more than the then flooded regular plan.
Bitwarden has updated the password manager for Windows to address a serious vulnerability. The vulnerability affected installations that added Windows Hello authentication to the password manager. It turned out that the implementation was incorrect and that anyone with access to the system or files could decrypt the passwords or even make changes to them.
Software Releases and Updates
WinUAE 5.0 is the latest version of the Amiga emulator. The new version introduces plenty of new and improved features, including screen rotation support, improved emulation of some features, native display mode support and more.
Gaming and Entertainment
Privacy-friendly YouTube frontend Invidious has received a cease and desist notice from Google owned YouTube. The open source project is under threat, even though it is not using YouTube APIs.
Netflix launched its new password sharing policy in the United States at the end of May 2023. Many, including Netflix itself, expected that its subscriber count would go down initially. This is apparently not the case, at least not until now. Daily subscriptions broke the 100k mark twice shortly after the new policy launched. The next months will show how successful Netflix’s strategy really is.
Other
Support for the Google Drive desktop app for Windows 8 / 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and all 32-bit versions of Windows is ending in August 2023. Affected users may still open their files on the Google Drive website.
Seagate plans to launch the first 32 terabyte hard drives in the third quarter of 2023. The company is already working on increasing storage to up to 50 TB. The price is unknown at this point, but the release could push the price of hard drives with less storage capacity down.
Article(s)
How to backup Windows systems efficiently
Backups are important and should be essential for all users. They come into play only when things go wrong. After a failed Windows update that prevents the system from booting, despite Windows’ own built-in recovery tools, which do not work always, a malware infection, a hardware failure, or any other situation where data can’t be accessed anymore.
Many things can go wrong and it is usually only a matter of time before disaster strikes. Backups secure data, so that it can be accessed even when disaster strikes.
There are different types of backups. Full system backups, which back up everything, partition backups, which backup only a single drive or partition, and data backups, which back up select files and folders only.
System backups are important, as they may restore the entire system to a previous state; this is useful when the operating system does not boot anymore, or when certain features or functions stopped working.
There are numerous backup solutions available for Windows. Lots of free options and many are quite good. The one that I use and can wholeheartedly recommend is Paragon Backup & Recovery CE. It is a free backup solution, the CE stands for Community Edition. It is free to use in non-commercial environments, and available for Windows and Mac systems.
The application supports Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and newer versions of Windows, all major storage systems and file systems, and it should run even on ancient PCs.
What you need
The latest version of Paragon Backup & Recovery.
A secondary hard drive, preferably external and more than one, for storing the backups. You may also use USB Flash Drives or sticks for backup purposes. This ADATA drive has 1 TB of storage and it is available for about $60 on Amazon.
Before you create the first backup
The very first thing you want to do is create backup recovery media. This is a bootable environment that you may put on a USB drive or DVD and boot from, when the Windows PC refuses to boot.
You boot into the recovery environment, which gives you access to restoring backups. This may be the only option, especially when Windows refuses to boot.
Select Recovery Media Builder in the Paragon Backup & Recovery software. Select “Use this Windows image (ADK is not required)” as the creation mode and hit next in the interface.
Select the drive that you want to use, it does not need to be too large, and continue. Note that any data that is on the disk will be deleted in the process.
Skip the network share option, unless you require it, and wait for the creation of the recovery environment. The tool uses the installed operating system for that and does not require any external files.
Once you have created recovery media, it is time to create the first backup.
Creating system backups
System backups are most important, as they may be used to restore access to a system that does not boot anymore or is showing other signs of issues that can’t be corrected manually.
Select Backup & Recovery in the application’s interface.
Activate Backup source to set what you want to back up.
Select “Disk / Volumes” on the next page.
Select the entire drive that contains the operating system. Look for Local Disk (C:), as this is usually the drive letter the operating system is installed on.
Continue with a click on OK.
Activate the Destination element.
Select the drive that you want to save the backup to. Note: do not select the drive that contains the system partition. Select another internal or external drive instead.
Select OK to continue.
Switch to Options.
You may want to consider the following:
Enable password protection. Anyone with access to the backup could otherwise open it, unless another form of protection, e.g., full drive encryption, is used.
Check backup integrity after creation runs verification to make sure that the backup is not corrupt.
Select backup up now to proceed.
The backup process starts. This can take a while to complete depending on the size of the source disk, the load and the performance of the system and destination disk.
You may restore the backup either from within the application’s interface, if the system still boots, or boot from recovery media instead.
Note that you may also backup everything, provided that the destination drive is large enough to contain all the data.
It is recommended to schedule backups or run them regularly manually. It is also a good safety precaution to use at least two backup drives and alternate between them for jobs.
An unpopular take on recent events at Reddit
Reddit announced just a few weeks ago that it would charge for API access. The fees that Reddit set for API access will lead to the termination of most third-party apps for the site, as they would ruin most app developers in a matter of days or weeks.
To protest this new API pricing, thousands of Reddit forums, called subreddits, have set their forums to private. A private forum becomes inaccessible for anyone but members of the forum. The protect will run for two days, but it may run longer in some cases.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman appears unimpressed by the protect. In an internal memo to all Reddit employees, Huffman stated that the protest will fizzle out and that Reddit would not make adjustments to the planned changes.
Reddit, just like Twitter when Musk took over, is confronted with requests to leave the site for alternatives and the aforementioned going dark campaign.
It is clear that Reddit believes that it is too big to fail, that the protest will slow down and that most subreddits that are protesting currently will return to normal.
Yes, some subreddits may stay private, some users and moderators may stop using the site and start using alternatives, but at the end of the day, this, very likely, won’t have too big of an impact on Reddit.
For that to happen, the protest movement would need to double down as well, so that thousands of subreddits remain set to private until a compromise has been found.
This won’t happen likely. Reddit operations will return to normal more or less. Third-party apps will be a thing of the past, as they can’t be operated without financially ruining the developer or asking users to pay a lot of money per month for access.
Some users will start using Reddit on mobile using a web browser, as it gives them a bit more control of the site over the official Reddit app. Desktop users continue using the site, but it is probably only a matter of time before the “old” version of Reddit is removed. This might also spark protests, but probably one that is even less impactful than the current one.
Reddit continues on its way and it will lose some of the first users of its site in the process.
Reddit is not the first service that is steering away from its core community and ideals. There are numerous examples in tech, from Google Search and Google in general, over Twitter and Facebook, to the Windows operating system.
Tech in less than 150 words
You should be using RSS Feeds
RSS Feeds are my single-most important technology to keep up with news. The feature is supported by many sites and requires use of a RSS reader, such as Thunderbird, QuiteRSS, RSSGuard, or many of the online options.
Subscribing is free and all you have to do is add the subscription URL, which you get from sites normally, to the feed reader. Once done, you will receive notifications whenever the site or part of it is updated.
You can have subscriptions for hundreds or thousands of sites, and will stay informed without having to visit these sites manually regularly. Updates happen more or less in real-time, if configured to check for updates regularly.
Many feed readers support usability features, such as filtering for keywords, searching, reading in the application or by redirecting to a web browser, and more.